WorkWise: Exploring health-care-career options

Mildred L. Culp

Thursday

Oct 25, 2007 at 12:01 AMOct 25, 2007 at 6:48 PM

Change brings opportunity, perhaps nowhere more dramatically than in health care, where options have significantly increased over the last few years despite hospital restructuring and shutdowns. The aging of the baby boom makes home health care in general a growing field, while nurses are also in extremely high demand. However, opportunities in the industry are uneven.

Change brings opportunity, perhaps nowhere more dramatically than in health care, where options have significantly increased over the last few years despite hospital restructuring and shutdowns. The aging of the baby boom makes home health care in general a growing field, while nurses are also in extremely high demand. However, opportunities in the industry are uneven.

Go after the emerging ones systematically. Scour the area while keeping national perspective. If you're just starting to consider working in the industry:

- Scout the market where you'd like to work.

- Review the range of hospitals and medical research organizations, as well as health-care-related publishers of books, magazines and trade journals, and nonprofit organizations tied to medical research.

- Approach opportunities in the industry with clear perspective, recognizing that hospitals may be more than half-staffed by people who aren't physicians or nurses, such as x-ray technicians, nurses and medical assistants, mental health caseworkers, dieticians and therapists, administrators, trainers and information technology (IT) and information systems (IS) specialists.

Keep going. Strive to adapt to the industry’s constant change to increase your security. Look for areas with a projected long-term need, such as medical billing, IT, IS and pharmaceutical sales. In addition, determine how you’ll meet licensing requirements, if any, where you want to work before you settle on a particular occupation.

Researching industry compensation is extremely important. There are many home health workers, for example, whose hourly wage doesn’t come with benefits. If you have coverage through a family member, you may be set, as long as that person’s job doesn’t fall victim to the vagaries of the market.

Develop a resume with at least one industry-related term in your objective and refer to something else in the industry in your resume. A statement about eldercare, whether short- or long-term, or the fact that you read about the latest findings in cancer or mental health research, will help focus employers upon what you want to do, rather than where you’ve been.

Are you in health care now but want to change fields within it? Proceed carefully. If you’ve been isolated with others in the same area of the field, spend some time at your favorite bookstore reviewing books about health care. The field changes so rapidly that your assumptions from a year or two ago may be incorrect.

Are you dissatisfied because of the isolation? Would another job increase your access to information and provide contacts? Start networking now. Would changing the terms of your employment help? This could mean changing shifts or going off on your own, working on a per diem basis. Would you have to make too many telephone calls to survive? Find a company that places people on short-term assignments.

Scour the market for the best environment in which to acquire skills and training you need. You may find them in training where you are now, external training, courses in an educational institution and unpaid internships. If you investigate education outside of your current organization, ask for the percentage of graduates from the last three years who obtain jobs after completing their study. Which kinds of occupations have been most difficult to place?

Are all of these jobs too technical? Nibble around the edges of the industry. Kelly James-Enger of BodyWise in Downers Grove, Ill., targets the Chicago area in speaking to women’s groups about nutrition, fitness and body image information. A job-changer herself, she might not seem to have been a practicing attorney.

The fitness movement can lead you to health food stores. Vendors distribute to them; advertising agencies and publicists represent them. There are medical libraries and health care associations. What about health care recruitment? The industry is in such transition that you may find the job you want where you least expect it.

Finally, enjoy the chance to help people. Everyone in health care can make a major contribution, whether working directly or indirectly with patients, or not at all. Even employees of the business unit of an organization are tied directly to the care-giving process. Go out and make the industry a little bit better.